The target paper, "Rethinking Traditional Methods of Survey Validation" (Andrew Maul), raises some interesting critical ideas, both old and new, about the validation of self-report surveys. As indicated by Dr. Maul, recent policy initiatives in the United States (e.g., ESSA) have led to a demand for assessments of…

This is a response to a focus article by Briggs and Peck (2015) in issue 13(2). It should have been published in issue 13(3-4) alongside a rejoinder by Briggs and Peck that did appear. Due to an oversight, it was not published there and appears here. See issue 13(3-4) for a rejoinder to this response. Briggs and Peck (2015) propose what amounts to…

Ultimately, measures in research, testing, assessment and evaluation are used, or have implications, for ranking, intervention, feedback, decision-making or policy purposes. Explicit recognition of this fact brings the often-ignored and sometimes maligned concept of consequences to the fore. Given that measures have personal and social…

In the past decade, there has been important progress in the development and validation of video-based instruments that enable the systematic assessment of teaching competence with large samples of teachers, across multiple settings and populations, and by researchers other than the developers. This commentary focuses on the methodological…

A response is made to a paper that urges the use of the Rasch model for educational assessment. This paper argues that the model is inadequate and that claims for its efficacy are exaggerated and technically weak.

In the original paper, it was argued that while there is an array of methods and methodologies available, their use is delimited by the culture of accountability that prevails in public sector institutions, a fact that is particularly problematic given the complexity and diversity of evaluation contexts today. This short rejoinder, to responses…

The REL Mid-Atlantic Webinar discussed the elements in a positive school climate and shared different methods for assessing school data, including the Comprehensive School Climate Inventory. The Q&A presented in this document address the questions participants had for Dr. Cohen following the webinar. The webinar recording and PowerPoint…

In this commentary, we examine Braverman's insights into the trade-offs between feasibility and rigor in evaluation measures and reject his assessment of the trade-off as a zero-sum game. We, argue that feasibility and policy salience are, like reliability and validity, intrinsic to the definition of a good measure. To reduce the tension between…

Longitudinal research has demonstrated a link between exposure to sexual content in media and subsequent changes in adolescent sexual behavior, including initiation of intercourse and various noncoital sexual activities. Based on a reanalysis of one of the data sets involved, Steinberg and Monahan (2011) have challenged these findings. However,…

The literature on bibliometric indices for assessing scholarly impact, in particular the "h" index (Hirsch, 2005) and its many variants, is extensive, but nevertheless Ruscio and colleagues (this issue) succeed in making a valuable contribution. They have made the effort of collecting publication and citation data for no less than 1,750…

Ruscio and colleagues (Ruscio, Seaman, D'Oriano, Stremlo, & Mahalchik, this issue) have done a great service by systematically comparing indices of scholarly impact. Three aspects of their work are particularly valuable: (1) Their assessment of the proliferating collection of metrics, whose development has become something of a cottage industry,…

In their article Ruscio et al. (Ruscio, Seaman, D'Oriano, Stremlo, & Mahalchik, this issue) present a comparative study of some of the different variants of the "h" index. The study evaluates a total of 22 metrics, including the "h" index and "h"-type indices, as well as other conventional measures. The novelty of their work is to a large extent…

Humphry (this issue) deserves credit for drawing attention to the long-neglected fact that differences in item discrimination parameters are often due to empirical factors and not the product of random error components. In doing so, Humphry offers a psychometrically elegant, coherent, and practically important new model that is more flexible while…

Behavioral scientists have struggled with units of measurement for as long as they have struggled with measurement itself. Psychology's sole attempt at an explicit unit of measurement--the Lexile Framework for Reading (Stenner, Burdick, Sanford, & Burdick, 2006)--has been and continues to be ignored by the psychometric "cognoscenti."…

In his 1982 response to the myth that "creativity is too difficult to measure," Dr. Joe Khatena (a long-time contributor to the literature on creativity), characterized creativity as the "most exciting dimension of mental functioning." Building on a three-dimensional view of creativity (emphasizing the "individual," the "environment," and the…